I Will Not Say the Day Is Done
by cycas
Summary: Maglor has breakfast with Elrohir and tests the truth of the Doom of the Noldor, Elrohir gives his opinion of the Shibboleth of Fëanor, Finrod Felagund goes on a walking holiday with hobbits in Eldamar and discusses Moria and the Valar, Sam sees Elf-magic, and Elrond visits Nerdanel to discuss Silmarils. [Return to Aman series 13: follows 'Many Meetings: The Night is Passing']


[Earlier stories in the Return to Aman series have established that Maglor sailed to Aman with Elrond, Frodo and Bilbo, but that the Oath of Fëanor is still binding. Elrohir returned to Aman with Sam Gamgee, who found to his surprise that Bilbo is still alive (and so is Frodo). Elrond had made an appeal for the House of Fëanor to return to life from Mandos, and we are waiting to hear the outcome for everyone but Celebrimbor, who has been allowed immediate release. Oh yes, and Bilbo and Maglor are having an ongoing song-writing competition. The previous story in the series was 'Many Meetings: The Night is Passing'.

* * *

It was a clear night on Tol Eressëa, the Isle of Exiles. Maglor, looking out from the hillside above the trees, could see dark leaves spread under starlit skies of deepest blue. Far below the trees, barely to be seen in starlight, he could hear the dark sea moving endlessly, waves hissing gently on the sand.

A fire of sweet-scented apple-wood burned with a bright flame that sent up golden sparks from time to time to blaze for the briefest moment among the stars of Elbereth, then go out.

The sparks had drifted against the stars like that over that first camp in Hithlum, above the singers at the Mereth Aderthad, while out hunting with friends and brothers in the mountains of East Beleriand...

Over the small lonely fire after peace had come to the shores north of Lindon.

This song only needed three more verses to be finished. He wove the sparks into the music.

The sparks had gone up like that over Losgar, over Dagor Bragollach and over the Havens of Sirion too: more of them, fiercer, brighter far than this.

The sparks had flown over Father, when he died...

His Oath stirred restless in its sleep at that. Best not dwell on it.

One more verse.

The sky was a paler blue, shading towards a clear green in the east, and the stars were fading out of sight, all but the Silmaril hanging low upon the horizon, secure from all evil. His father's work in all its glory, and no-one here to see it, except for him.

"Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima," Maglor said, and nodded to the cousin who had forgiven him bloody ruin and stolen children. The Silmaril might not forgive, but its bearer had been more generous. And not a thief. The Silmaril did not burn him, after all.

The fire burned to its last ashes, and he had the last verse now, safe remembered.

The stars were gone. Arien was climbing into the sky and all the East was blushing with almost the gold of vanished Laurelin. Gulls were crying and the waves glittered in the sunrise. From the harbour of Avallónë, a little to the south, he could hear clear voices singing.

Maglor got up and stretched, then put his harp carefully in its bag, and made his way down the hill through the dew to the home of the son of the star.

He found the star's grandson awake early when he stepped quietly into the house, to be greeted by the first rays of the sun slanting through the small-paned green-glass windows onto the octagonal blue tiles of the high-ceilinged kitchen, the sound of someone murmuring a cooking-song, and a delicious smell.

"Hello," Elrohir said, in the Westron of Middle-earth. "I'm frying mushrooms. Do you want some?"

"I hope you've left some for the hobbits!" Maglor said in the same language. Elrohir had only arrived on Tol Eressëa the previous day. Presumably he was used to speaking Westron most of the time. "They're very keen on mushrooms."

"Understatement!" Elrohir said and laughed. "I've known Bilbo long enough. Not to mention Sam, Merry and Pippin. I wouldn't dare to eat the last of the mushrooms! But as it happens, we have a surfeit. I collected a great basketful yesterday evening."

"In that case, yes, I would," Maglor said, putting the harp down. He filled the large round black kettle and put it onto the stove. "Thanks, Elrohir!"

"What do I call you?" Elrohir asked, stirring mushrooms. "You surely don't still go by 'Lark'."

Maglor smiled. "That was just for Lindon, when you were small. I am Maglor son of Fëanor. Or I suppose you could say 'cousin', if you prefer, though I think you'll find that somewhat imprecise if you need to use it in a crowded room."

"I suppose so!" Elrohir said. "An odd thought, having cousins who are Elves. For all my life, 'cousin' has meant the Edain. So you are my father's kinslaying... cousin. We always wondered."

Maglor made a face. "Yes. If someone says 'kinslayer', everyone will turn and look at me, but I prefer not to use it as my name. Lark would be better! But I think Elrond only gave me that name because he thought you might mention me by accident to Círdan."

"Pffft!" Elrohir said dismissively, cutting yesterday's bread into slices. "Círdan wouldn't care. More likely he was keeping it quiet so it couldn't come out under torture, if we were captured. That's usually why Father keeps things quiet."

Maglor winced and almost dropped a teacup. "You were little children then."

"Orcs don't spare little children," Elrohir said with alarming briskness. "They don't spare anyone . Why were you a secret, and not an ally, like Glorfindel? There must be a good reason. There always is, with my father."

"I suppose because Sauron's master had used us as his weapon before. Myself, and my brothers," Maglor said, discomforted. But Elrohir had every right to ask, and so he tried to give an honest answer. "We had an oath. I still, unfortunately, have an oath. I have forsworn it, now. Easier to do that without an Enemy to take hold of it and use it against my friends. But I'm afraid it is the kind of thing that Sauron would have used to make fighting beside Eärendil's son and grandsons... perilous. There's little worse than a trusted ally that turns on you."

"Very true. One Saruman was more than enough. Yet here you are, trusted to wander into my father's house at dawn, when Sauron and Saruman and all their works have blown away upon the breeze." Elrohir said, applying butter to the bread with a generous hand. "Suggests you got something right."

"Perhaps I did, at that." It was an unexpected thought. He considered it while he made the tea. "Middle-earth was at peace, after the Last Alliance, when Elrond brought you to see me on the coast. I don't think he expected the Enemy to be looking for me, or thought that knowing me might put you in danger. At least I hope not! If he thought that a risk, he would never have brought you. Or Celebrían."

Elrohir thought about it, and nodded. "It was a long time ago. Sorry," he said "I didn't mean to be rude, Maglor. I was only trying to fit you into the histories." He took a mouthful of mushrooms and nodded approvingly to himself.

"In Westron; Forgotten harper, singer doomed, who young when Laurelin yet bloomed, to endless lamentation passed, and in the tombless sea was cast ," Maglor supplied helpfully. "The last two phrases contradict one another, which bothers me. And for that matter, if there is one thing I am not, it is a forgotten harper. My deeds are a matter of song until the end of Arda... though I could wish they were better deeds. And better songs! But Bilbo says he felt at the time that the last line helped the whole thing scan, and to be fair to him, translating verse is always difficult. Modern Westron is not a language I know very well, so perhaps I'm missing a nuance."

Elrohir scrunched up his face in amusement and shook his head.

"Or perhaps not, then! I suppose it doesn't matter all that much since, thanks to your father, I'm now on the other side of the tombless sea and have more or less given up on lamentation. That would be the same lamentation of which not even an echo was supposed to pass the mountains to trouble the ears of the Valar in their joy, by the way. I admit I was delighted to discover that particular ruling had been so spectacularly unsuccessful."

Elrohir made a face that was half surprise and half amusement, and very much like Elrond. "You feel that the Valar should be troubled by your lamentation?"

"Well, I am a singer. It seemed particularly pointed to be told we were not just exiled but would be unheard as well. And I am not so fond of the Valar that I wish to spare their ears. But if Mandos was wrong about that, then I can hope the rest of it might have an end. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well he said, and yet, I feel that I have just made two perfectly adequate cups of tea. Thank you!" he added, accepting a generous plate of mushrooms on bread and presenting Elrohir with tea in return.

Elrohir sampled the tea and nodded. "It doesn't seem to have any particularly evil end to it," he said solemnly. "Though I suppose I could still drop the cup on my toe, or find it had a terrible aftertaste."

"Better drink it and find out," Maglor suggested. "I can always return to endless lamentation if it does. Though I'm still not sure it really counts as endless if I stop and start."

"The First Age is more than long enough to seem an endless time ago to Men and Hobbits," Elrohir pointed out, smiling. He sipped his tea.

"I suppose so. But I feel endless should be endless," Maglor said. "You can't doom someone to endless lamentation and throw them in the sea." He took a mouthful of mushrooms. They were very good. Elrohir could cook.

"At least you get your own verse," Elrohir said darkly. "I'm always one half of Elladan and Elrohir, in songs. And I always come last because 'Elrohir' has a better selection of words that rhyme with it."

"My brothers Amras and Amrod used to complain about that," Maglor said. "Though really two people who went around with one name between them half the time have no right to carp at poets for lumping them together! Elros and Elrond had the same complaint, when they were young, now I come to think of it. Anything I wrote for them had to have at least one verse for each name or there would be arguments. You'd think Elrond would have remembered that and chosen names that were more different for you. Or are they your mother-names?"

"They chose them together, I think," Elrohir said. "People in Middle-earth don't usually have mother-names and father-names any more. Or the Edain don't, anyway. "

Maglor blinked. "No name-giving or name-choosing ceremonies? That's a pity. The Edain used to, at one point. Hador gave all his children father-names, I remember. A good excuse for a party and for gifts, the name-choosing ceremony."

He remembered then that Elros and Elrond had never received their father-names. They had been too young for that, when Maglor and his brothers had come down upon their home with fire and sword. Their father Eärendil had never had the chance to give them their name-choosing. Perhaps that was why they had decided to dispense with the custom for their own families.

"You can have a party and gifts without a ceremony," Elrohir pointed out over mushrooms. "Birthday parties. Yule. Midsummer. You don't need extra names for those."

"I suppose not." Maglor ate more of his mushrooms. A thought was niggling at him. He gestured at Elrohir with a fork. "Surely there are more rhymes for Elladan than there are for Elrohir?"

"Not in Westron," Elrohir said. "I do speak Quenya too, of course," he said hastily, switching to that language. "I know they speak it here, it's not only for books." Taken by surprise, Maglor laughed.

"What? Did I get it wrong?" Elrohir lapsed back into Westron.

"Not at all. My father would have called it perfect... It was only that you spoke Quenya as if you were speaking Sindarin with a Doriath accent. No 'sá-sí'. I suppose that probably means nothing to you, but if anyone mentions it, please tell them your Quenya pronunciation is only Elrond's Sindarin accent, and not my fault. Particularly if it is your many times great-grandsire Fingolfin who asks!"

Elrohir raised his eyebrows, looking baffled. Maglor explained. "It was very controversial, in the Years of the Trees, all that sort of thing. People got very angry."

Elrohir rolled his eyes. "Didn't you have anything important to worry about?"

"I suppose not," Maglor said. "We were all very young, it seems, looking back. Much younger than you are now in years, and certainly in experience. It would never have occurred to any of us to hide things from our children in case they should be put to torment."

Nobody had thought that the Sons of Fëanor might be put to torment, until it had happened.

Elrohir shrugged. "It wouldn't have occurred to me, either, until Angmar invaded and we were fighting for our lives. Then a number of things that Father had said and done suddenly made far too much sense."

"I suppose it would occur to Elrond," Maglor said unhappily. "At least you had the years of peace Gil-galad and Elendil bought you. Your father had no such fortune as a child. Still, here we are at peace in Aman. I have made a new song beneath the stars, and you have cooked some very fine mushrooms. It looks as though the day will be a fine one. What are you going to do with it?"

"I'm not sure," Elrohir said. His fair, confident face suddenly looked doubtful. "For two thousand years, more or less, Elladan and I have been hunting orcs,making strategies, or thinking about the Enemy. Two thousand years! So many lives of Men. And now the Enemy is gone, and I have left the last of the orcs to Elladan and sailed into the West. That's always seemed like the end of things. I don't know what I thought was going to happen, after that. I woke early this morning, and thought, what am I doing here? I don't even speak proper Quenya!"

"You do, really," Maglor said. "You only have an accent: everyone does. I was only foolishly amused by old history — and you were quite right, it was history that only mattered then because there was nothing worse to worry about. I was joking about Fingolfin. He speaks many dialects of Sindarin and Westron, and I know he'll be delighted to meet you no matter how you speak or which language you use. You'll have a lot of cousins to meet too, and many old friends from Rivendell."

"I suppose that makes up for family lost, at least a little," Elrohir said. He sighed. "Only a little though. Elladan chose to stay in Middle-earth with all our friends and cousins — I suppose you know that already. He got married. I went to the wedding before I left... I looked at him, afterwards, and it seemed he was already all one thing, a Man, and ready to build the new world of Men, then go out beyond it. And I... was not. I couldn't leave our parents with no children to follow them to Aman. I was the only one left who could."

Maglor looked at him, and had private thoughts of the unwisdom of making important choices to please a father. But Arwen and Elladan had chosen for love, after all. Perhaps in a way so had Elrohir.

"It has become a little gentler, the choice," Maglor told him. "They asked Elrond and his brother to choose at the end of the War of Wrath. Of course the half-elven grow up faster: they were full grown and experienced campaigners by then. But still, they were not sixty years old. I thought that harsh, when I heard of it. The Valar could have given them more time. It was hard on Elrond. "

Probably it had been hard on Elros, too. Of all the apologies Maglor had made, Elros deserved one more than most — if nothing else, for that last attack, when Maglor and his brother had stolen into the camp of the Host of Valinor, where Elros and Elrond were living by then, and slain the guards around the Silmarils. He had never had the chance to apologise to Elros for that. Elros had gone to Númenor. Maglor had never seen him again.

"We did at least have a good long time to think it over," Elrohir was saying. "And you can't have both, my father says. You have to choose something to lose, in the end."

If Maglor had been given the choice, he would have followed Elros. Not into Everlasting Darkness, but out into the unknown. The Darkness he knew, and he had rejected it at last; would go on rejecting it with whatever strength he had, until the breaking of the world.

But it might be that far beyond Arda Marred, where elves were bound with all their fearful memories, beyond the darkness and the unforgiving stars, there lay something else...

Most people didn't get a choice. You just had to make the best of the path your nature gave you. Probably that was not a thought to mention to Elrohir just now, though.

He smiled instead. "I only asked what you were planning today because my mother is visiting the Lonely Isle just now. She would love to meet you. But perhaps we should wait for the rest of the household to get up before I suggest that. It may be that Celebrían has made plans already."

. . . . .

"Good morning," Elrond said, sometime later, appearing in a magnificent blue sleeping-gown patterned with a design of snowdrop flowers. "You've risen early."

"Elrohir has risen early," Maglor said. "I, however, am ignoring newfangled innovations such as the Sun, and have not yet gone to sleep. Have a cup of tea." He provided one.

"Maglor is examining the truth of the Doom of the Noldor and testing its consequences by making tea," Elrohir explained cheerfully to his father. "So far, all the tea has begun and ended well."

Elrond looked startled, then he laughed. "I'm glad to hear it," he said.

"It came to me that that the echo of our lamentation had quite demonstrably passed over the mountains," Maglor said, pouring himself another cup. "It passed them very swiftly, or else the Eagle would never have come for Fingon and Maedhros. And if there is one person who should have fallen under the Doom of the Noldor for kinslaying and rebellion and following the House of Fëanor, it was certainly Fingon! Even the Vanyar have heard our lamentations by now, unless there are any who have had their fingers in their ears and have been humming for a very long time. Knowing the Vanyar, that is not entirely impossible... But I've not allowed the Oath to drive me, not since I threw the Silmaril into the sea. If it hasn't driven me, it can't betray me. That part of it is broken, too."

"You haven't let it drive you," Elrond said. "And even before that, you didn't let it, not all of the time. You could have held us for ransom, Elros and me. That would have been obeying the Doom of the Noldor, if you had. Servants of the Enemy would have done that. You didn't, even when the Shadow reached all across Beleriand. We never thought you would."

Maglor gave him a dubious look. "A triumph of hope over experience!" he said. Elrond shrugged, smiling. "You have been quite strikingly unafraid. Celebrían is unafraid. Even Elrohir, when I came walking into the house at dawn! And he's barely met me..."

"I met you when I was a child," Elrohir said. "And Father did talk about you, you know. It wasn't as if you were a stranger!"

"No, I'm your kinsman, but still, you were not afraid. Evil is supposed to come by treason of kin unto kin and by the fear of treason . Those were the words. And so, it seems to me, the Doom of the Noldor has come all unravelled at last, and is fraying into threads."

"Yes," Elrond said and smiled. " Slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief . It said that too, I believe. But it never managed to finish you off!"

"No," Maglor said thoughtfully. "I suppose there's something to be said for not being a hero."

"First, do no harm, or so the saying goes. Well done, Elrohir. I have been telling him for a long time that he could be trusted. I was starting to think he'd never believe me!"

. . . . .

The winter passed, a warm wet winter full of wild winds blowing in from the sea that carried the dead leaves away from the orchard and whirled them out into the ocean, and soon the blossom lay white again upon the apple-trees of Tol Eressëa.

Finrod and Amárië had come to the Lonely Isle again, to visit relatives and friends old and new. Together with Frodo, they had come up with a plan.

"Are you sure you feel well enough to walk so far, Sam?" Elrond asked, when Finrod, invited by his niece Celebrían to dinner, mentioned the idea of walking with the hobbits through Valinor.

"Of course I do," Sam said stoutly. "I'm the youngest of the three of us. If Mr Bilbo can manage it, at his age, then I can't see me having any difficulty. I'm only a hundred and two, Master Elrond!"

"Frodo and Bilbo have lived here for a good long while," Elrond pointed out. "Their bodies have had a chance to remember how it was when they were young, to recover from weariness and injury. But you only got here recently."

It had been, at least for hobbits, a very long time since Sam Gamgee, arriving for the first time in Rivendell, had begged to serve his master at Elrond's table, and had to be told firmly that he must sit with Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took and be a guest of honour.

Since then, Sam had endured Mordor, opposed the will of Sauron, become a Counsellor of the North-kingdom, and had been chosen to be Mayor of the Shire seven times by his own people. And at last he had chosen to leave his beloved Shire and all his family to sail into the West with Elves.

There was no diffidence to Sam now. He was quite at home. He sat cheerfully at dinner beside Finrod, who had been King in Nargothrond long ago, and now shared his father the High King's rule in Tirion, and said firmly, "I've been here all of half a year, Master Elrond! That may not be much of a time for you, but it's a good long time for me. I'd welcome the chance to do some exploring."

"I promise we won't go too far or fast, Elrond!" Finrod said. "And it's not as though we were travelling in Middle-earth and needed to carry arms and supplies, you know. We're only going to wander a little in Eldamar. You and Celebrían would be very welcome to come too, if you like."

Elrohir looked at his father's face, and laughed.

"Thank you, Finrod, but I think I'll leave that to you and the hobbits." Elrond said politely.

"Elrond doesn't enjoy wandering," Celebrían explained to her uncle. "He prefers things to be comfortable. Comfortable, well-supplied and very well defended! I think Tol Eressëa suits him. Well, both of us, really."

"Very sensible of him, too," Maglor said. "Several thousand years of sleeping outdoors has left me with a great appreciation of roofs and beds."

Finrod grinned at him. "I know better than to ask you!" he said; a tactful way for Finrod to acknowledge that Maglor, of the senior, dispossessed House, should not go into Valinor, without making it sound like a command.

"Well, I want to come," Amárië said. "I never had any adventures in Middle-earth, and though Eldamar may be rather tame by comparison, I'm looking forward to it."

"There's much to be said for comfort," Bilbo said. "But still, I'll happily take the hidden paths that run, west of the Moon, and east of the Sun! For a couple of weeks, at least; there's nothing like a change of air. Anyway, travelling with Elves is almost as comfortable as most hobbit-holes are. At least, as long as it doesn't rain.

"Well, I hope you'll take it gently, Sam," Elrond said, giving in.

. . . . .

Finrod's people were waiting for them on the shore when the ferry from Tol Eressëa came in to the long quays of Alqualondë, where the white ships of the Teleri fleet waited in long lines, with the light wind shaking the shrouds, making a clear ringing sound that mingled with the murmur of the sea.

"Gildor!" Frodo said, delighted, recognising an old friend. He laughed. "I'm sure you told me once that you found the company of hobbits so dull!"

Gildor bowed and laughed too. "And so it is, but alas! My lord Finrod has taken a liking to the company of hobbits, and so I must endure it! There's no accounting for the whims of princes."

Finrod shook his golden braids at him in amused disapproval. "And that would be why you besieged me with demands to come along as soon as you heard I was planning this journey with the hobbits, Gildor? You must love dullness very dearly!"

"I must indeed, my lord," Gildor said, his grey eyes narrowing in amusement. "For it was I who named Frodo Elf-friend long ago, before any of his great deeds. Bilbo and I are very old friends, of course. But I am most delighted to see Sam again! I see you meant it when you said you would follow Frodo to the moon if need be, Sam. Or at least from Middle-earth to Aman outside the circle of the world."

"This wasn't exactly what I had in mind at the time," Sam admitted. "Not that I'm too sure exactly what I had in mind back then. That was a very long time ago!"

"A very long time for you, but little time for us, and rightly so, for you have done a good deal more with your time than we have," Gildor said smiling.

"Well, that is how the paths of Men and Hobbits run," Finrod said a little sadly. "But we have called you away from your swift straight road to wander in the woods with us for a while, going nowhere in particular. Frodo, Sam and Bilbo, this is my dear friend Edrahil."

Edrahil was shorter than most of the Noldor were, with brown hair and skin and brown eyes too, with flecks of gold in them. He seemed at first rather solemn and quiet, but when he smiled his face lit up with joy. He bowed politely to the hobbits and introduced his friends and their horses too by name. They were not planning to ride, but Finrod had decided to bring horses to carry food and bedding. They had a couple of hounds with them too, tall white dogs with long pointed red ears whose sharp muzzles came above the shoulders of the hobbits.

The horses and hounds were clearly considered important members of the party, and followed the walkers willingly, without any need for bridle or leash to lead them, as they made their way slowly up from the quays through the wide green meadows on the outskirts of the city of Alqualondë.

"I thought we'd travel for a little while up the coast outside the mountains, first," Finrod said, "Then turn back to Alqualondë, and perhaps go up through the Pass of Calacirya after that."

"The Cala- cir ya. That's the pass that is the only way through the mountains?" Sam asked, careful with his pronunciation on the unfamiliar word.

"It is," Finrod said. "We have on a number of occasions had a very lively debate about making a second route in a tunnel through the mountains further north, for the convenience of Alqualondë and the towns along the coast north of the city, but unfortunately the Valar were against it. Well, all apart from Aulë. I think he thought it an interesting challenge, as indeed I did myself. But the Valar have always been rather over-wary about the defences of the Pelori. They get terribly nervous about them."

"But you thought an underground road through the mountains would be a good idea?" Frodo asked politely. He had spent enough time in the company of both dwarves and Noldor to know that was the right thing to ask.

"We were thinking of something rather like the dwarvish realm of Moria. I have heard great things about it! " Finrod said with some enthusiasm. "I'm sad to say I never had the chance to visit it myself. It sounds fascinating from what my sister says about it. I believe it spanned an entire mountain range: both a road and a city at once. And it certainly seems to have held for a very long time against enemies, too."

"Yes, I believe it did. It was vast and very confusing, when we were there" Frodo said, remembering the dark tunnels of Moria with a shudder. "And very very dark."

"Well, you'd expect that from the name," Edrahil said looking doubtful. "The black pit? It doesn't sound very inviting."

"I asked Celebrimbor about that," Finrod said. "It sounds absolutely magnificent, the way he tells it. Much bigger than Nargothrond, Edrahil, and very well-lit. Apparently the Sindarin name is a joke. Dwarvish humour."

Bilbo laughed. "Yes, that sounds like them," he said.

Frodo said "Moria fitted it all too well as a name when Sam and I were there. Though anywhere that has a Balrog living in it and far too many orcs, is not at its best... And it was on fire, too. But Gimli said it was wonderful in the songs of his people, when it was full of dwarves and lamps and windows."

"Which Balrog, do you know?" Edrahil asked curiously. "I've always wondered about that part of the tale, which of them it was that got away and hid itself away beneath a mountain."

Frodo looked up at him in surprise. "I don't know," he said. "How do you tell the difference between them?"

"They look different," Edrahil explained. "As people do. Well, they are people of a sort. A very unpleasant sort! They started off being able to put on any form, but that didn't last. They were all quite recognisable after a while. In Dorthonion, they used to keep a great illustrated chart that recorded sightings of each one."

For some time, walking slowly up into the green hills above Alqualondë across open pastureland grazed by great white cattle with long curving horns, Frodo and Sam attempted to describe the Balrog they had seen in Moria to Edrahil, Finrod and Gildor, all of whom remembered a number of Balrogs either seen or described from battles of the Ancient Days, and to Amárië, who had never seen a Balrog, but had, it turned out, compiled a great number of eye-witness reports into a book about them, with line-illustrations. Their attempts to identify the Moria Balrog were rather hampered by Frodo and Sam's inability to agree on exactly what they had seen.

"You'll have to ask Gandalf," Sam said in the end, giving the struggle up for a bad job and shaking his head. "He was the one who fought it, after all. He'd know much better than us."

"Hmm," Edrahil said. "I'm not sure my academic curiosity is strong enough to warrant risking meddling in the affairs of wizards. I'll leave that to my lady Amárië and her kin."

"But isn't this country all the home of the wizards?" Sam asked. "You all live here with them!"

"The Maiar and the Valar live in the city of Valimar, and upon the mountain of Taniquetil, and in the forests of Oromë and the gardens of Lórien," Amárië told him, pointing in the direction of each place as she named it. "At the Halls of Mandos and the Halls of Nienna, upon the western coasts of the world, too. The Ainur don't usually live here outside the mountains of the Pelori, or even in the Calacirya near Tirion, as a general rule. Well, apart from Ulmo and his people, of course. Ulmo is the exception to most rules! Many of the Noldor, like Edrahil here, are still rather wary of the Ainur."

"Gandalf — Mithrandir — is a good friend of ours," Frodo said. "He's a friend of Elrond and Galadriel too. I know he can be grumpy, but he has a good heart."

"Gandalf did great deeds in Middle-earth," Gildor said. "We owe him much. But even when they are only subtle and quick to anger, surely you'd agree that the Maiar can be perilous, Frodo? Saruman was a good deal more than only quick to anger. "

"I suppose he was!" Frodo admitted. "But surely that is very unusual?"

"He was far from being the only one," Gildor said, glancing at his lord, and then at Edrahil.

"I think Frodo knows that at least as well as I or Edrahil, Gildor," Finrod said wryly.

"I suppose I should," Frodo said, thoughtfully. "But Sam and I never did meet Sauron personally, you know. Thank goodness! But it makes it hard to think of him as a person, like Gandalf, rather than just a..." he ran out of words and looked away, down across the green hills to the blue shores of the sea below them.

They had come up onto a wide green pathway that ran along the hillside. Below them, a low forest of wind-blown thorn trees blanketed the hillside, a miniature woodland that might be passable for Hobbits, but for the Elves and their tall horses was almost impassable scrub. They turned to follow the path, skirting the small trees.

"I saw a great number of Maiar when I visited Valimar," Bilbo said. "They seemed to be very much part of the family there, so to speak."

"In Valimar, they are," Amárië agreed. "The Maiar and many of the lesser spirits of the land live with the Elves as one people. But that is Valimar. My people, the Vanyar, have never quarrelled with the Ainur. Whereas the Noldor..."

"They banished our lady Galadriel," Gildor said quietly. "They let us fight their war for them, and then they said our king's daughter must not return. They said that she was proud and rebellious, and then they counselled all us Exiles sternly to go home to Valinor! We had already failed our House and our lord once, those of us from Nargothrond. We were not going to do it again! It makes you wonder if the Valar understand loyalty at all... A good number of us chose to wait for her."

Finrod's face had become very serious, almost grim. "The feelings of the Noldor about the Ainur are still somewhat mixed, Frodo," he said. "There are a number of grievances that still rankle. The Ban was terribly hard on poor Celebrían. After the horror that happened to her, to have to seek healing in an unknown land and leave her mother behind, knowing she was prohibited from following... " He shook his golden head. "That was hard. I went to Celebrían when she first came to Avallónë. She wept for her mother, and I... I didn't know how to comfort her. It was hard on my mother and father, too. My father was no kinslayer. He turned back and sued humbly for pardon. Then he led the host of our people to Beleriand against Morgoth, when they commanded it. It is truly hard to know what more he could have done to seek their forgiveness. Yet he too received little pity."

"I see," Frodo said. "I knew about the grievance of our friend Maglor, of course. I had not thought of how Galadriel's family must feel. Lothlórien was so beautiful, and so dearly beloved, and Gandalf is a dear friend of Galadriel's. And of course, Galadriel is so wise and powerful, as seen by hobbits! It seems odd to think that Lothlórien was a place of exile too."

Finrod shrugged. "It has left all of us a little cautious of meddling in the affairs of the Ainur without a very good reason. Particularly if there is a chance they might become angry. That is, after all, essentially what a Balrog is. A Maia who has made some regrettable decisions and let go of his temper to a quite unforgiveable degree... But this has turned into a terribly dark conversation, hasn't it?"

"It has, a bit," Amárië said, pausing to admire a creeping plant with flowers like blue stars that wove through the branches of the trees beside the path. She picked a flower and tucked it into one of Finrod's braids with a smile. "Have a flower to cheer yourself up."

Bilbo said thoughtfully, "The Eldar and the Maiar do seem quite a bit the same in some ways: so very old and so very wise. Very different to us, or Dwarves or Men." He gave Edrahil a grin. "Gandalf has a beard, of course, but then so does Círdan. You can't go judging by beards."

"What!" Edrahil exclaimed, breaking through his usual reserve in incredulity. "Surely the Elves are different to the Maiar in every possible way!"

Finrod laughed, less carefree than usual. "It might not seem like that to Men and Hobbits, Edrahil." He stopped walking and looked out down towards the sea. "We've done quite well climbing up into the hills this morning, but my conscience is troubled by Elrond's voice telling Sam to take things gently. Perhaps it's time to stop for lunch."

"This looks like a nice spot," Sam said, indicating a green knoll set a little above the path. They spent most of the afternoon there in the end, looking out over the distant sea towards the Lonely Isle, listening to the Elves sing and take turns playing on the harp. They were in no hurry, after all, and going nowhere in particular.

As the sun went behind the mountains of the Pelori behind them and the shadows began to stretch out into the sea, they heard a rustling from far down the slope. As they watched curiously, the low twisted trees that clad the hillside lifted up their short branches one by one making a way for a long line of cattle to make their way up the slope. Before them, a tall elf dressed in green and brown led the way. These were not the great white cattle that they had seen in the meadows by the shore, but a smaller breed, even smaller than the cattle that were kept in the Shire, with fine golden-brown coats, dark noses, and huge dark liquid eyes.

They made their way up through the new path that the trees had made for them, turned onto the main path and went away, the cow-herd striding before them with a long staff in his hand, as proudly as a king leading his subjects holding a golden sceptre. As he passed the Noldor and the hobbits reclining on the grass, Finrod called a greeting, and the cow-herd inclined his head gravely, as one prince greeting another, and went on, his little cows following at heel.

"Behaving if they were so many dogs!" said Sam, with considerable respect.

They went on a little way further that evening, singing softly as they walked. The sky darkened to a clear blue and the stars began to come out. They came to a small wood of rowan trees, tall and fair with pale grey bark, crowned with pale blossom, that was set around a small dark pool that reflected the stars. Above it, a single pale stone was set, carved with shapes of birds.

There they stopped to eat and rest, and when the hobbits awoke in the morning, it was to see the morning sun rising far across the distant sea to the East, making a long golden path across the water.

"I wonder what they're doing over there," Sam said to Frodo, gesturing vaguely at the rising sun towards their home, a land that was not precisely in the same world anymore. "And I wonder how it works, for the Sun to rise here and there both together, when we're outside it all, and the real world is round."

"You think this world isn't real?" Frodo said curiously.

"It doesn't seem entirely real," Sam said. "It's very pleasant and all that, but here we are with an Elvish king out of distant legend, wandering the woods of the forgotten West like something in a song. Usually if I slept on the ground in a wood, I'd expect to wake stiff and grumpy, with a root sticking into my neck! But if anything my aches and pains are less than yesterday. It's not natural."

"Almost exactly what I said myself!" Bilbo said. "Though at my age, I'm not complaining too loudly, young Sam, and I advise you not to either: there's no reason to call on bad luck; wait till it comes calling on you!"

"Young Sam!" Sam said and laughed. "My hair's a good deal whiter than yours is now, Mr Bilbo, and I thought my days of sleeping in the woods long gone."

"I suppose it isn't natural, for us," Frodo said. He looked around at the Elves who were preparing breakfast. "I think it might be, for them though. They're part of it. They fit into this land as if it were made for them. The roots wouldn't stick into them, they'd fit around them."

"Not quite," Finrod said, joining them. "I would say more that we fit ourselves around the world, most of the time. It helps that we can speak with the world, so we all know better where we all stand, and eventually hope to reach an accommodation. That is why we were the Quendi, the People Who Speak, in the beginning. But this is a hospitable woodland. It wouldn't wish to cause you discomfort."

"See, now how can that be?" Sam said. "I've been a gardener all my life, more or less, and if there's one thing I know, it's that weeds don't pay any account to my preferences. They turn up whether I want them or not. If your garden's all over ash saplings and dandelions, all you can do is pull 'em up. They don't listen if you tell them not to! Or they don't at home, anyway. Maybe they do here."

"They might not choose to listen," Finrod said, "But it might also be that they have something to say on their own account that might be worth listening to! But this land is not very different to your own, Sam. Or it wasn't, to begin with."

"But it's outside the world, isn't it?" Sam asked. "The ship went up out of the sea, and left the world behind it. If you sailed out that way in a boat," he waved at the sunrise, "you wouldn't come to Middle-earth. Not unless you could do what the lord Círdan does. You'd go round and round, or maybe fall off the edge."

"Aman is outside the world now," Finrod agreed "But in the beginning, it was not. It was taken away to protect it. There are plenty of people who will tell you that we elves should be grateful for that, for it means we have our peaceful haven here, safely away from all the woes and turmoils of Middle-earth, where time can run slow and memory is strong. But to my mind we have lost something important too. We lost the other Speaking Peoples, when we were called to Aman, whether in body or in spirit, and we left them behind. Now we can't go back, we can only remember them."

"We might not all remember them altogether kindly," Gildor said, bringing over a wooden platter of bread and fruit and dried meat, and presenting it to Finrod and the hobbits. "Númenor at its worst was terrible. They did not speak with the forests or work with them. They felled them and burned them."

"They can be very good, or very bad," Frodo said, taking some bread and thanking him. "I don't think Hobbits could ever manage to be either so great and good, or so wicked as Men."

"Hobbits tread lightly enough," Gildor said smiling. "Perhaps not as lightly as Elves, but it's harder for you to speak with the world and listen to it than it is for us."

"Still, pulling them up and burning them is what you have to do with the dratted ash saplings that spring up everywhere," Sam said, piling ham into a bread roll. "In a lifetime of gardening, I've yet to find another way of doing it. If it's not that the trees are different, and there's a secret beyond regular hoeing, I wish someone would tell me!"

Finrod smiled at him. "I am fairly confident that Middle-earth and Aman are not in essence different. Trees in Aman are much like trees elsewhere; it's the people that are different. Not that I am much of an expert on gardens, or on trees, myself. The Noldor aren't, as a general rule. My sister Galadriel is an exception, and horribly overtalented, if I may abuse the privilege of being a brother enough to say so! I think she gets it from my father, he's a gardener too. I must introduce you to him, Sam."

. . . . .

They wandered along East of the Mountains, through the woods and pastures of the Teleri, which were rich and well-tended. There were not many people living or travelling in the narrow country north and west of Alqualondë between the mountains and the sea, but those who lived there were pleased to see visitors and welcomed them, offering gifts of food and drink. Finrod had brought gifts of his own with him to give to their hosts; instruments and gems and finely-woven cloth from Tirion, rare spices from the lands beyond Valimar, appreciated all the more because the Teleri of these distant quiet valleys rarely travelled into the heart of Eldamar.

But at last, Amárië decided that she was tired of seeing only sunrises and never the sunset, lost behind the massive mountains that hid half the sky. They turned south again, and made their way slowly upon the shore, over wide salt-pastures grazed by tiny, elegant animals that looked a little like goats, but more finely-made and delicate.

They turned inland a little, and joined the road to Alqualondë. Overhead, white gulls cried, and strange birds probed with long red beaks in the places where streams falling from the mountains wandered out across the shining mud.

In Alqualondë, they stayed in the house of King Olwë of Alqualondë, who was delighted to welcome his grandson Finrod, his wife and particularly his guests, the three Ringbearers.

There the hobbits heard many songs, and were given gifts; new clothes, a hobbit-sized walking staff for each of them, bound with silver and carved with seabirds, a basket of mushrooms. They politely but firmly refused the many other gifts they were offered there.

"For after all," Bilbo said. "We are only three old hobbits, with not much further to go, and few needs now to meet. I think we'd all prefer songs to other treasures: they're less wearying to carry!"

"They certainly are," Frodo said. "And I think they shine brighter, too."

"That's wisdom," Gildor said to him smiling. "Almost all the treasures of lost Beleriand are gone and sunken in the sea. The shining swords of Hithlum and the wealth of Nargothrond are gone, the Isle of Balar whelmed into the sea, the towers of Eregion are fallen, the beloved walls of Mithlond left behind forever. Yet I still recall the songs, and they shine in the mind as bright as any Silmaril."

. . . . .

But none of them were weary yet of travelling, and so after a few days they set out again.

Now they were climbing again, up into the pass of Calacirya, with the sea behind them and the mountains rearing up vast and dark ahead, with precipices hard as glass, topped far above with crowns of white ice.

But down below the mountains in the wide gap of the Calacirya, the land was green and fair, and far ahead of them shone the white walls of the city of Tirion. Finrod led them away from the main road up towards the city, onto smaller winding paths along the borders of the northern mountains.

"I've had rather too much of Tirion for a while," he said. "I hope you'll visit the city on another occasion, Sam, but just now I am taking a holiday, and so I thought we'd take the quieter paths through the hills instead. Orodreth will do perfectly well on his own if I leave him to it, but if he knows I'm in the city, he's bound to come and ask my opinion."

"Well in that case," Sam Gamgee advised, with all the authority of a seven times Mayor of Michel Delving, Postmaster and First Shirriff, "you should just tell the lad he'll do very well and make him get on with it."

Finrod looked down at him doubtfully, then laughed. "And you found that worked, did you?"

Sam smiled up at him. "Well, in all honesty, no, I can't say it did, not very well! I had a good many reasons of all sorts to come to Aman, but one of them was that nobody is likely to come tapping on my door here, asking if I can remember this, find that or organise the other thing! I do like to keep busy mind you, but at the age of a hundred and two, it was time for a break."

"And that is why we are going to take this route!" Finrod said, taking a turning up a narrow path that wound up between two tall trees just bursting into full green leaf.

After a while they came to what had clearly once been a broad paved road running under the feet of the mountains. The paving and the finely carved stone drainage channels were undamaged, but the trees beside it had shed many years of leaves onto the road, which had crumbled to a fine dark soil. The paving could only be seen in a few places.

"Is that a tower?" Frodo asked, peering up through the leaves. "It is! It looks abandoned though."

"It is a tower," Edrahil agreed. "One of the old defences of the Calacirya. There should be a wall, too. Oh yes, here is the start of it, there in the bushes."

"It's been a long while since I have passed this way," Finrod said. He went forward under the trees, and put his hand lightly on the finely-carved pale stone beside an open doorway for a moment, as if in greeting. "The trees have grown up, more than I had realised. I didn't think we had come so far."

" in the Calacirya they set strong towers and many sentinels, and at its issue upon the plains of Valmar a host was encamped, so that neither bird nor beast nor elf nor man, nor any creature beside that dwelt in Middle-earth, could pass that leaguer. " Bilbo quoted rather smugly.

"That's right," Amárië said to him. "The defenses that were set up after the fall of the Trees. I served in that host, for a little while. Then Finrod's father asked me to help out with things in Tirion. Terribly sweet of him. He saw me sadly doing guard duty at the camp looking quite bereft, and decided that I needed a reminder that Finrod might not be gone forever. The host was mostly made up of the Vanyar and Maiar then. There were not so many of the Noldor left here."

Finrod turned from the tower to say, "And the Teleri, very reasonably, I can't help feeling, said that they weren't sending people to guard the Calacirya when all their settlements are outside the walls of the Pelori anyway. But these towers were made by the Noldor. Maglor's mother Nerdanel worked on some of them: my father, too. Towers and fortresses are rather more our sort of thing than the Teleri or the Vanyar, and the Ainur are on the whole better with the large scale. Mountains, and so on."

Frodo walked forward, looking up at the height of the towers. The nearest one still had shards of glass visible around the windows, and the remains of hinges visible, although the door itself had vanished. "They look on quite a large scale to me!"

"All things are relative," Finrod said following him. "They were manned for a long time. They had to be large enough to be reasonably comfortable."

Edrahil said to Frodo, "My lord and I spent some time here with the garrison, after we returned from death. The fortresses were rather shorthanded in those days."

"Rather pointless, too!" Finrod said. "Morgoth was quite busy enough in Middle-earth, he was hardly likely to attack Valinor a second time, not least because what was left of the Noldor were there still facing him, though hopelessly outnumbered... Still, we couldn't go back and help with that, so we came and did guard duty for a while instead, and very useless we felt doing it, too."

"But they are all empty now?" Frodo asked.

"Yes." Finrod confirmed. "It took us some time to persuade the Valar that we should stop manning the towers and walls, after the fall of Númenor. Not that they let us defend the pass when the might of Númenor came ashore anyway. We were all ordered back to Valimar, leaving Alqualondë and Tirion empty. It didn't please my uncle Olwë too much, that! The Teleri were left without defences. Most of them ignored the order, they took their ships and ran up the coast into the North. They were never going to leave their ships behind... But anyway, once Aman was removed from the world there didn't seem much point to all of this. The trees have come here instead."

He stepped back and looked appraisingly up at the tall grey towers that loomed above the treetops. "They are in rather a state."

"Finrod! You are supposed to be on a holiday!" Amárië protested. "And didn't you just say they were pointless now?"

"Well yes," Finrod admitted. "But they do look so sad. And it comes to me that my father's apologies to the Valar for daring to even consider leaving should be remembered. It wouldn't take very long just to make them look a little less neglected."

Sam looked along the long silent line of empty towers that ran away into the trees along the half-hidden road and then back at Finrod, very doubtfully. "It looks like a lifetime's work to me!" he said.

"Oh well, perhaps if you did it all by hand!" Finrod said. "This is one of the things where the work is different depending on who is doing it — though I wouldn't wish to move the trees. They are beautiful, and the towers can still look out above them and see Tirion and the strands of Eldamar. See Amárië! I must just show Sam how to call things back out of memory."

Amárië looked to the sky and shook her head. "Noldor!" she said.

"You don't have to help," Finrod told her. "Edrahil?"

"Of course," Edrahil said inclining his brown head. He took a harp from the bag slung on one of the horses, and brought it to Finrod, who sat down with it on stone beside the half-hidden road, played a few notes and made an adjustment.

"Ready?" he asked the other elves, who had come to stand with him. They nodded. Amárië sighed. "You'd better stand in the middle of the road," Finrod told the hobbits. "Just in case anything comes loose."

"Loose?" Frodo said, looking in alarm at the height of the towers through the leaves, but Finrod was already playing, quiet quicksilver notes that grew in complexity as they listened.

He began to sing, a complex pattern of words in a language that Frodo recognised as an older form of Quenya, though he could not entirely make out all of it, even after so many years of practice with the language.

The other elves lifted their heads and began to join the song, and after a moment, Amárië, sighing, joined them.

Around them, a mist rose, filled with light as the mist that comes up from a river at dawn shines with the first sun. It lifted as the song did, and wove in long diffuse strands around the walls and windows, the missing doors and broken rooftops.

And the long line of towers that began to change, shimmering as if there was a heat-haze before them, though the day was shading into evening and the sun was not hot.

The towers shivered. Windows and doors faded into place, roofs were lifting into straight lines as the music pulled at them. Stains and watermarks blurred away. Frodo would have sworn that some of the trees stepped backwards away from the walls, lifting their long branches in surprise, though recalling it later, he thought that perhaps it had been that the walls stepped away from the trees.

The music of the harp faded, the voices ended their song, and the towers and walls of the Calacirya shone in the evening light, every window and door perfect as if it had been made yesterday by an enormous army of craftsmen, each one a master of their art.

"Well!" Sam said, impressed. "If we had been able to do that after the last ends of the War in the Shire, the clearing up of all the mess would have been done a deal sooner!"

"That looks much better!" Finrod said. He handed the harp to Gildor and stepped forward to inspect his work. Then he swayed, blinking, and Edrahil hurriedly stepped forward to put an arm around him to support him.

"We'd better stop here," Amárië said, in a tone that was amused and disapproving. "You didn't have to do it all at once!"

"It was only calling it back out of memory!" Finrod said. "Galadriel did it for years, in Lothlórien." He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. "And we do it in Tirion regularly, you know. I'm all right, really, Edrahil!" he said, and attempted to shrug Edrahil off, unsuccessfully.

"I bet Lothlórien wasn't in such a state when she started," Amárië said. "Oh, do sit down, Finrod!"

"Well, perhaps not," Finrod admitted.

Edrahil helped Finrod to a bench that was now whole and clear of debris, standing outside the tower door, and lowered him onto it.

"Galadriel had that Fëanorian device of Celebrimbor's to help her, too" Amárië pointed out, sitting down next to him, pouring out a thin white drink from a flask. "She didn't just wander up to a ruin with a harp and a handful of friends and decide that it would be a good idea to do a spot of renovation! And as for Tirion, when did you ever call anything in Tirion out of so many long years of memory?"

"You can be a terribly stern person sometimes, Amárië," Finrod said, with a rueful grin, taking the cup.

"It seems this Elf magic can be a great deal of hard work, even if it does make for a nice quick job." Sam observed. Finrod sat on the bench without answering, looking tired. Not one of the worried-looking Elves around them demanded to know yet again what the word 'magic' was really supposed to mean.

"Perhaps," Frodo suggested to Sam and Bilbo, "this should be a day when we show the Elves some proper hobbit cooking, and make the fire and supper."

"Ah!" Sam said, rubbing his hands together in some delight. "Proper hobbit cooking. A very welcome change that will be! But Mr Bilbo is more of a baker than a cook, and if I may say so, Mr Frodo, your cooking never was a patch on mine. If you two get the fire going, then I shall borrow a pot or two, and see what I can do with those odd beasts that the hounds caught this morning. They look like they will stew up very nicely to me. And perhaps there should be some dumplings to go with them."

"Excellent!" Frodo said. "Your stew would perk up anybody, Sam! I'll get some firewood."

. . . . .

In the white city of Tirion, Elrond came to the house that long ago had been renamed the House of Nerdanel, ignored the front door, and went in through the garden gate, between the rosebushes which were just beginning to show dark red buds. He came to the door of Nerdanel's workroom and tapped on it a little tentatively.

There was a long pause, then a sound of clattering, and then Nerdanel appeared, wearing her working clothes, her red hair springing around her freckled face in wild tangled spirals.

"Elrond!" she said delightedly. "Come in, come in! I was just about to take a break!"

"I'm not interrupting?" he asked.

"When you're interrupting, I'll tell you," Nerdanel said firmly. "And I always have time for my grandsons, honorary or not. I've only got the two of you, after all. And I only got Celebrimbor back because you spoke for him! Come and have some wine. How's my horrible son? The living one, obviously."

"Maglor is well," Elrond said. "He sent his love. Oh, and this." He gave her an envelope, and accepted a cup in return. "He wrote it with Bilbo. It's rather rude, I'm afraid. He said you wouldn't mind."

Nerdanel laughed and took it. "He really is my most disreputable son! I'm sure it will be very funny. I'll make sure to read it to Anairë and watch her blush. Are the Gondolodrim still following him about watching angrily like so many guard dogs, waiting for him to put a foot wrong? Or has he managed to lead them astray?"

"Something of both," Elrond said with a smile. "My old friend Glorfindel has been talking to them. He knows them all well, of course. We seem to have settled on a compromise. Maglor has agreed to stay on Tol Eressëa, for now, and those of the Gondolodrim who suffered at the Havens have agreed to stay off it. It does at least mean we no longer have an encampment of heroes of Gondolin on the doorstep. And Maglor has written a new sonata for flute and harp for him to play with Ecthelion. "

"Well, that does sound like progress of a kind," Nerdanel said.

"You said in your letter that you had something you wanted to tell me in person?"

"I fear so. I have spoken with my horrible husband in the Halls of Mandos," Nerdanel said with a rueful smile. "He's come up with what he says is a way to break the power of his Oath. You aren't going to like it, Elrond. I don't think it's possible, to be honest, but he says it is the only way, so I thought I'd tell you at least, so you could say you thought it impossible too! But I didn't want to put it in a letter. He says it needs a Silmaril."

"Hm. I'd better not mention that to Maglor," Elrond said thoughtfully.

"You think he might react badly?" Nerdanel asked. "I thought you felt he could be trusted?"

"I do trust Maglor," Elrond said. "He knows that. But talk of his father and the Silmaril will wake his oath. It will torment him, and he'll have to fight it. I'd rather spare him that for as long as possible."

That way, too, it was less likely that Maglor would fail. Elrond was not so foolish as to believe that Maglor could resist his oath for long if it were awake and preying on his thought. But if Maglor could put his oath away out of mind, he would, and if he could not, he would at least give Elrond warning. Even with Morgoth in the world, Maglor and his brothers had always managed that.

"One Silmaril only?" he asked.

"You say that as if you think it would be easy to get one!" Nerdanel exclaimed.

"It will be a good deal easier to get hold of one Silmaril than three," Elrond said, considering the problem. "Do you think he'll give it back afterwards?"

Nerdanel shook her head. "I don't know what Fëanor will do," she said. "I rarely did before he went to Formenos. I certainly don't now. I did ask. He said he would return it, and he always used to be honest, whatever else he was. But he also says that dead, he is only the half of himself. I wouldn't rely on it."

"Hm." Elrond thought about it. "Aman, at least is clear of the Enemy's darkness. Though of course, he did sow his lies even here, and no doubt their seeds still lie hidden in the dust, as they do everywhere. We can't recover the Silmaril that Maedhros..." he remembered in time that Nerdanel was Maedhros's mother, and left the sentence hanging. "I'll try to convince my father. There is also the Silmaril that Maglor threw into the sea. Ulmo, presumably, has that. If the Valar rule that the House of Fëanor may be released from the Halls of Mandos, then it might be that Ulmo will be prepared to return it, if we ask him. But I'll try my father first."

"Really?" Nerdanel said. "You want to do that? The awful things burned Maglor and Maedhros. It seems pretty clear that Fëanáro's right to them is void."

"I'm not asking for a Silmaril because Fëanor has some special right to them," Elrond said. "I'm asking because it seems he needs it for a good reason. One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters. I've believed that for a very long time. That applies to my father as much as anyone else. Lending a treasure to a kinsman, or even giving it to him at need is not unreasonable."

"It might burn Fëanáro," Nerdanel pointed out. She thought about it. "I could bring some gloves and tongs."

Elrond smiled. "Very practical."

Nerdanel frowned, fingering the small irregular pebble that hung around her neck on a thong. It was, presumably, the stone that was enchanted to allow her to speak with her notorious husband. It would not speak for anyone else.

She said, "I keep hoping that he might come out of the Halls of Mandos himself, whole, as he used to be. Not overwhelmed with anger and mistrust and grief. I wish I could make myself entirely believe it. No matter what he says now, dead, I can't forget his living voice calling me untrue for deserting him. Anger fades, but Morgoth's lies were in his mind and voice, Fingolfin says. What if they still are?"

"Morgoth's lies got into many voices," Elrond told her wearily, feeling oddly old. Nerdanel was ages older than he was himself, but she had never left Aman. "I've heard them from my brother's mouth and Maglor's too. Despair, terror, anger, greed, jealousy... so many kinds of lie that can spring up unlooked for and swiftly take root. You learn to watch your thought, to take miruvor, to play the harp or sing, to set a virtue on a gem, or the hilt of your sword, to call on Elbereth, to think of starlight on the Sea, to keep on hoping... so many ways we learned to hold thought and memory constant against the Shadow. Celebrimbor is a master of the art. Galadriel, too, and my daughter Arwen. And Sam Gamgee, though he would be most surprised at the idea. Darkness isn't something you have to accept or flee. You can learn to know it, and reject it too. It's a skill that can be taught."

"Is it? You give me hope, Elrond! If it's a skill that can be taught, then Fëanáro will certainly want to learn it."

"Well, that's a hopeful sign, too," Elrond said. "Sauron lost that. He lost the desire to learn or make anything new. Or so Galadriel says, and she knew his mind and saw his purposes."

"She did?" Nerdanel looked faintly horrified, and took a generous swig from her cup.

"It was a very long and terrible war," Elrond said. "All one war, really. The Jewels, the Rings, the Shadow of the Enemy."

"But you still think they can come home," Nerdanel said. "After all this time, they might come home from the war at last."

"I don't know," Elrond said. "I hope."


End file.
